Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Milonga -
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 13 June -
Milonga, a new work by acclaimed Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, explores the world of tango with ten professional tango dancers from Argentina, two contemporary dancers and five live musicians. On paper, it sounds like it ought to be deep, rich and evocative. Sadly it is not. This production is an episodic mish-mash puttied together by theatrical device.
So why doesn’t it work? For this production Cherkaoui brought together a creative team consisting of three composers, a sound designer, a tango consultant, a costume designer and a set and video designer. But it does not feel as though the team were led in one direction. Rather, ideas from each quarter were incorporated rightly or wrongly and then patched together. And although Cherkaoui claims to seek to investigate the clichés of a form and then present them afresh, I was not enlightened about tango in new way.
Choreographically he serves us a duo-after-duo of tango exposition, as one couple after another take centre stage. Their legs lick the floor and each other’s groins – flick, kick, switch and stretch. Intricate and interesting, yes, but Cherkaoui takes these tangos no further. The high points are an absolutely electric trio danced by three men and the finale, where he allows arms to echo leg work with delicate, intricate conversations of touch, more stylistically his own. The contemporary dancers play the role of “outsiders” in the milonga scene; they don’t quite fit and the choreography is rather ordinary. Although the tango dancers are good, their presence and projection did not stretch to my seat in row T in the stalls. Perhaps the Joan Sutherland Theatre was too large a venue for the intimate tango form.
Like the dance, the music is episodic. One piece after another begins, climaxes and ends with little variety in sound and no helpful transitions to give the audience a sense of where it is all going and why.
Visually, the opening film sets the tango scene and builds audience anticipation with a taste of the timeless stories of milongas, dancing bodies and movements held within. But in the end, the overall staging is all noise behind a structure lacking in intention. The stage is filled with set pieces of paper cut-out dancers animated by light and chairs that are moved to create new spaces. Behind this projections of the dancers appear from time to time as do large film backdrops of the streets of Argentina whizzing by.
It is not surprising that tango attracted Cherkaoui. He has always been inspired by different cultural traditions from his first works such as Tempus Fugit with Les Ballets C de la B which draws upon each dancer’s unique cultural background to Sutra for which he collaborated with seventeen Buddhist monks from the Shaolin temple in China. Knowing these works, and having seen two moments of such beauty and originality in the new work’s high points, it seems to me that Milonga in its present form is underdeveloped; it has the potential to go so much further – indeed beyond the clichés.
- Emma Sandall